What will happen if Trump gets medieval... or has he already done this? By Hal M. Brown

 When I was a kid we had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica that I used to read books choosing volumes at random. There was one entry that really got to me. It was about medieval torture methods and devices. It had lots of pictures. The one device that haunted me and which I even had bad dreams about being used on me was the iron maiden. 

Watching the news yesterday where a commentor was describing how Joni Ernst doubled down on her “everyone’s going to die” comment (reference) that “the cruelty is the point.” Of course this has been an often used description of Trump policies. Trump has given permission for the likes of Ernst to be as mean as she is.

I got to thinking about how Trump was lashing out with ever more unrestrained vengeance against his enemies in words and deeds. Then I thought of medieval torturers and the phrases about getting medieval came to mind. 

You can read about the origin and popularization of the term get medieval (or git medieval) here. It is sometimes phrased as someone going medieval. This is how the Urban Dictionary defines it:

From the movie Pulp Fiction, one of the most feared characters stated his henchmen would "go medieval on yo' ass", which basically was a way of saying his men would click out on the men being threatened. To go medieval means to become savagely violent without restraint, similar to how we imagine those in the savage, unrestrained medieval times would respond to someone who had done them wrong.

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I was thinking about Trump going medieval and then began to consider what it would be like if he went even more medieval than he already has.

For example, consider what he’s already done in such a short time.

Start with the fairly benign tax war he started…

and about the unprecedented monetization of the presidency for his personal enrichment…

he’s not just ignored and defied the courts, but he’s attacked and insulted judges so some fear for their personal safety…

add his alienation of our allies…

as well as his abandonment of Ukraine (while insulting its leader)…

throw in his appointment of incompetent toadies to run and ruin so many branches of government we depend on, turning some like the DOJ and FBI into his personal army…

and then there’s the DOGE/Musk decimation of life saving programs from USAID to medical research to NOAA and FEMA…

and the soon to be put on the chopping block Medicaid and Medicare…

with Trump it’s if you cross me, since I can’t literally cut your flesh and bleed you dry with a knife, I’ll do it by cutting your federal funds…

and let’s end with the unleashing of ICE to terrorize the country. The latest and worst example occurred yesterday in a San Diego restaurant. See: ‘This was bananas’: Rachel Maddow floored by ICE raid gone ‘horribly wrong'

Excerpt:

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow unloaded on Trump-era immigration agents while blasting what she described as a bungled and militarized ICEraid in San Diego that left the community stunned.

“This was bananas,” Maddow said during the opening minutes of her show Monday night. According to the MSNBC host, "multiple clown cars" of agents in “full battle rattle with helmets and long guns and flak jackets and goggles and masks” stormed a San Diego restaurant on Friday.

“Looking like they were going to repel out of helicopters into the Tora Bora cave complex to fight al-Qaeda,” Maddow told viewers. “These guys, dressed like this, run into a neighborhood Italian restaurant and reportedly handcuffed the entire crew working at the restaurant, everybody inside.”

She said the raid ended with busboys and waiters arrested while stunned neighbors demanded answers.

Trump has put our democracy on a medieval rack. 

He is stretching it. Muscles are tearing, bones are breaking. It’s in the iron maiden.

He’s doing this and he’s not particularly angry yet. 

What will happen when the mad king goes truly mad? 

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When a mood driven president's decisions lead to chaos, chaos can lead to catastrophe. By Hal M. Brown

 

I wrote the follow coments on MaxBoot’s Washington Post column about Ukraine’s successful attack against air bases deep inside Russia: “Ukraine just rewrote the rules of war” (subscription).

Two sentences, really two words (I put in caps), stand out to me. This one about the US sending more Patriot missiles:

President Donald Trump appears in no MOOD to send any replacements.

... and this one about the planes being hit also are designed to carry nuclear weapons:

This should serve to remind us of why it is so dangerous to have such a CHAOTIC U.S. administration at such a dangerous moment.

We have a president making decisions which are often based on his moods of the moment. There are no suggestions of a rational process which he engages in where he consults with expert advisors and considers the pros and cons, and the short and long term, ramifications of his actions. He's a mood driven person who thinks he knows it all. This is leading to chaos and chaos can lead to catastrophe.

In context, follows are the sections I referenced:

Operation Spiderweb was a brilliant and daring gambit to make up for the fact that Ukraine is running low on ammunition for its Patriot air-defense systems — and President Donald Trump appears in no mood to send any replacements. European countries are trying to help, but Patriots are in scarce supply. Rather than simply trying to shoot down Russian missiles in flight, the Ukrainians figured out how to disable the aircraft that launch the missiles while they are sitting on a tarmac.

and

While signaling Ukrainian resolve, Sunday’s attack could also undermine nuclear stability, because the same bombers that launch conventional cruise missiles against Ukraine are also designed to launch nuclear weapons. This should serve to remind us of why it is so dangerous to have such a chaotic U.S. administration at such a dangerous moment. At a time like this, it would be nice if the president had a fully staffed National Security Council led by a tested, seasoned adviser — rather than an NSC that is led by a moonlighting secretary of state and that has just been purged of many of its most experienced staffers.

Boot also has a somewhat snarky observation regarding Trump:

During the infamous Trump-Zelensky argument in the Oval Office in February, the U.S. president told his Ukrainian counterpart: “You don’t have the cards.” Well, Zelensky just played — if you will pardon the phrase — his trump card: Ukrainian ingenuity.

Trump is moody. He’s impulsive. He considers himself to be infallible, but he’s really like a ball in a pinball machine. He thinks he’s the pinball wizard. He thinks he’s a genius at working the flippers and tilting and banging the machine to cheat to get the highest score ever. 

Eventually the ball settle down back into the machine and tha game is over. The world as we know it doesn’t end. With Trump this is not a game and his modus operandi could result in the world, our democratic world, ending. 

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Is Trump's agenda really stumbling? By Hal M. Brown

 I had no idea what to write about this morning until I saw the chyron on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” when the panel was gleefully talking about various setbacks which Trump was having in implementing his agenda.

The word that jumped out was “struggling.” The agenda may be “struggling” in the sense that it hasn’t been implemented in its entirety the way Hitler took over all of Europe is a 54 day blitzkrieg. Trump’s army doesn’t have tanks, aircraft, artillery, and millions of armed troops (ICE is a pipsqueak force in comparison). Still, considering what Trump’s army accomplished in just over 100 days, he has done a damn good job with the resources he had. Even Hitler would probably admire him.

Sure, there have been some bumps in the road. In his arroagance, some of these may have taken him by surprise. Certainly, a number pissed him off while others he shrugged off. From lawsuits to Springsteen to stock prices to poll numbers to DOGE not delivering as promised, they all add up to a few flys at a picnic which you hoped to be absolutely perfect. 

Trump has henchmen with fly zappers to deal with these pesky annoyances. I had a chance to use the zapper I bought a few weeks ago and it worked, although the odor of a fast-fried fly was noxious. The smell disappated in a couple of minutes and was replaced by the savory aroma of chicken being cooked. So it has been with Trump moving past the blowback from his setbacks. He moves on to the sweet smell of success.

Moving along in their discussion about politics, the MSNBC panel added James Carvelle and they were all smiles when they talked about Democratic hopes for 2026.

Their optimism springs eternal. For example, how they celebrate the struggles the Trump adminstation is experiencing, they can’t admit that the country is well and truly fucked. They are assuming that even Democratics winning both houses of Congress in the midterms will make a difference. By then there’s a good chance Trump will be ignoring Congress altogther. 

The same goes for court rulings which go against him.

Back to the Nazi 54 day blitzkreig, if Trump is ever able to use our military to take over the country we are well and truly fucked.

On another but related subject, I occasionally read The Contrarian, a Substack I had such high hopes for I paid $500 to be a Founding Member of when Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen started it.

Now they are so awash in what I see as false optimism and their celebrating their victories in court that I hardly ever read it. I can’t figure out what they fancy themselves to be what with their Pet of the Week and their weekly recipes.

I did check out “How YOU Helped Knock Musk Out of DC–& of Politics” by Norm Eisen. Eisen often is on MSNBC talking about cases against the Trump initiatives which he and his associates won in court. Jennifer Rubin is also a frequent MSNBC guest.

That Substack begins:

The end of this week brought two of the most dramatic scenes yet in the decline and fall of Elon Musk—and of his and Donald Trump's failed DOGE effort to remake government. Despite all the damage that they have done (and that Trump will continue to do) we should take a beat to appreciate the milestone. It speaks to the power of the patriotic opposition—and of the role you’ve played, dear Contrarians.

The first of those two dramatic scenes came on Thursday in a New York courtroom, where a Perry Mason moment took down DOGE. My colleagues and I had sued over DOGE agents running rampant through sensitive government data at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), illegally accessing data about tens of millions of current and former federal employees, contractors, and job applicants. We made that case on Thursday in what the press accurately called a “mini-trial” of DOGE. The highlight was our almost 3-hour cross-examination of the administration's main witness (grilled by my colleague, Andrew Warren). We elicited several concessions: the witness all but admitted OPM was not following the law in granting access to DOGE!

Below are the comments I added:

Is your arm hurting from trying to pat yourself on the back? Nobody filing lawsuits helped knock Musk out of DC. If anybody did this it was those who boycotted Tesla and those who unloaded their Tesla stock. Basically, though, Musk knocked himself out of DC by failing to fulfill his promise of ginormous savings DOGE would bring in.

…and…

In the first two paragraphs Eisen compares a court victory to a Perry Mason moment... cringe... and then there's more self-congratulation. The YOU of the title is how being a Contrarian YOU helped in ways that aren't clear except through your contributions. By the way, the reason you can read this is that I am one of them and thus can comment, and I am one who paid to be a founding Contrairian at that.

I don't totally dismiss his lawsuits and those from others, but I see them more as slowing down the Trump blitzkrieg. Trump still hasn't decided to declare himself a total monarch who can ignore court rulings which go against him with impunity.

I have critiqued this Substack's contributors before for being purveyors of optimism unlike those savvy truth tellers like Timothy Snyder, Thom Hartmann , Sabrina Haake

The Haake Take

Exercising the First Amendment while we still have it.

By Sabrina Haake

Steve Schmidt,

The Warning with Steve Schmidt

Explains what is happening, and why in our turbulent era. Speaks truth to power. 1 written & 1 broadcast commentary/day 6x/week.

myself, 

Hal Brown's Substack

I'm a retired psychotherapist who writes about politics.

and others who are trying to sound the alarm that we are as far down the road to dictatorship as the Nazis were when they invaded Poland and were poised to take over Europe which they did in 54 days.

It took four years until the Allies were strong enough to mount D-Day. As for the Perry Mason comparison, fans know that in the TV series he only lost three cases. His clients are always innocent and when he gets them off they go free. When Norm Eisen and others go after Trump, who is always guilty, and they are victorious he never goes free. His illegal and/or unconstitutional actions may be stalled by the side of the road but he has his own personal auto club in the waiting whether a higher court or the Supreme Court who will eventually give him a jump start and he'll be embarked on his juggernaut to destroy democracy again. He'll keep doing this until he's strong enough to ignore courts altogther. See: Law and Justice in the Third Reich - 

That’s it for my dark view today. Happy Sunday…

Update":

By Robert Reich from RawStory - Tide turns on Trump: Musk out, tariffs crushed, ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ crumbles. My comment: with photo is below.

Oh yeah, tide turns, so many optimists, so few realists. It hurts to face the fact that no tide has turned. This is just a series of setbacks like a flat tire on a few Stryker 8-wheel military vehicles in Trump's blitzkrieg to impose his dictatorship.

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